How I Save Hundreds of Dollars Each Year Just By Reading My Bills

We are all guilty of getting in a hurry and doing things out of habit. How often do you sit down and read the itemized breakdown of your utility, medical or misc. bills? For me, it is every single time. There is a reason for this... nobody is perfect and your bill can reflect human error. I have had my bills credited up to $96 just for rereading my bill. We went out of town a few years ago for a couple of weeks. Mom and dad had the pets so there was no reason to have the air conditioner on. We unplugged everything from the wall outlets to avoid occurring charges for the draw on them (why pay if you aren't using it), we turned off the AC and turned the water heater to the away/vacation setting. Our power bill should have been little to nothing. WRONG. It was sky high. Turns out they actually didn't read our meter for the month and they adjusted accordingly. Another example is yesterday while paying our daycare bill online, the total was high than it should have been. DH became frustrated because I read the total account history to find out what was up. Turns out we were charged a weeks worth of tuition for K even though he does not attend the summer program. Well of course that is human error and it was fixed thus a $96 credit to our account. It really does pay to check and recheck your bills.